Inside the Time Tunnel…
"Oh, this is smooth!" Kelly said with a smile. They were almost approaching the year 2530, yet there hadn't been the slightest disturbance. Everyone else nodded in agreement.
"There's no turbulence at all!"
Those anti-magnetic decals were truly effective. But at that exact moment, the Time Machine suddenly began to shake violently. Damn it, they'd praised it too soon.
Shizuka asked: "Doraemon, is the sun at it again? Should we use the Time Belts?"
Doraemon pulled on the machine's control levers, changing its flight path. "No, it's not the sun. A wormhole has form ahead, causing minor turbulence throughout the entire Time Tunnel. Don't worry, we'll go around it!"
The group struggled to hold onto the machine.
"And this counts as minor turbulence?!"
The Time Machine accelerated and curved around the wormhole ahead. At that moment, the five girls finally got a clear look at it. It resembled a black hole, but instead of pure darkness, there's a streaks of violet swirled within it. Countless arcs of lightning crackled around its surface, constantly releasing eerie snapping sounds.
And when they were just about to pass the wormhole successfully, another wormhole suddenly started to appear out of nowhere, catching Doraemon off guard.
"Huh?! How is that possible…?" Doraemon stared at the warning display on the electronic screen. At least five or six wormholes are forming throughout the tunnel at the same time.
In truth, so-called wormholes are actually a very common cosmic phenomenon.
Sometimes, the space within the Time Tunnel would becomes unstable, allowing external forces to connect with it. But because of the phenomenon's unstable nature, if something from outside were to force its way into the tunnel during one of these moments,it would create a rupture inside the Time Tunnel itself, causing a wormhole to form. Any object that approached this wormhole would be sucked in and thrown out into some completely unknown point in space-time.
Naturally occurring wormholes are impossible to control under normal circumstances. However, the Përjetësia people learned how to stabilize and manipulate them. In fact, this became the foundation of the folding technology behind their space-time traversal systems.
They would capture naturally formed wormholes throughout space, stabilize them for observation, study the distortions they created, and eventually learn to control those distortions at will, allowing them to travel freely across time and space.
After studying the phenomenon for so long, wormholes were nothing unfamiliar to Doraemon and his people. But seeing so many of them forming continuously like this was something he had never witnessed before.
This was not a natural occurrence.
This... It was as if something from a sealed region of time was forcibly trying to break into the Time Tunnel.
Doraemon gritted his teeth. "Something outside the tunnel is continuously trying to force its way in, destabilizing the Time Tunnel and causing wormholes to appear throughout this entire section… Everyone hold on tight! I'm accelerating, we need to get out of this area immediately!"
As he spoke, Doraemon slammed a button down, and the Time Machine surged forward at full speed.
But just as the machine was about to escape the area, several figures suddenly burst out from one of the wormholes and slammed violently into the Time Machine. The impact sent all six of them flying out of the machine.
For a brief instant, everything went white before their eyes. Then they were hurled completely out of the Time Tunnel.…
…
In the middle of a vast forest…
Within a massive crater in the ground, five people slowly opened their eyes.
Kelly, Rim, and Connie wore energy armor, leaving them without a scratch, though their heads spun painfully. Shizuka and Doraemon, meanwhile, had been protected inside a sphere of water. It was another of Shizuka's techniques: Πριγκίπισσα μέδουσες (Jellyfish Princess), a skill that instantly created a flexible defensive bubble.
"Is everyone alright…?" Kelly asked, looking around at the others. Look like all six of them had made it through safely…
No.
Her face suddenly went pale.
There were only five people here. Karen was gone.
"KAREN! Where are you?! Damn it, Karen!" Kelly shouted desperately.
No answer came.
Shizuka dissolved the water sphere, and she and Doraemon dropped to the ground. Kelly rushed over to Doraemon, her face deathly pale.
"Doraemon, Karen's missing! Hurry, we need to find her!"
Doraemon lowered his head, adjusting his Time Belt, but then his expression tightened.
"No… something's wrong with the spacetime structure here."
"What do you mean!? Don't joke around with this lady!!" Kelly exploded, grabbing Doraemon and shouting at him.
"Calm down, Kelly!" Connie quickly restrained her, while Rim tried to soothe her as well.
"She probably got thrown into a different point in time. But with Karen's abilities, she'll be fine. She definitely won't let anything happen to herself!"
Kelly take a deep breath.
It was true. Whether Karen had fallen into the past or the future, she should still be capable of surviving. Most of their group's equipment was carried by Karen herself. Unless she landed directly in the middle of the apocalypse, she ought to be safe.
But what if…
Kelly forced herself not to think further.
"She'll be alright… she'll be alright…" She muttered repeatedly to herself.
After a while, she finally calmed down a little. Letting go of Doraemon, she whispered: "Sorry… I got too emotional."
"I don't blame you," Doraemon said softly. He understood that feeling perfectly. If the missing person had been Nobita, he would probably have reacted no better than Kelly had.
"Karen's smart and careful. She'll be alright."
"Mmmm…" Kelly nodded weakly.
Seeing that Kelly had calmed down, Connie released her and then walked over to Doraemon: "Is something wrong with the Time Belts? And where exactly are we?"
Doraemon adjusted the belt once more, frowning deeply.
"We've arrived in the year 2525, at least, that's what the Time Belt's last recorded coordinates say. But there's something very strange about this forest. It feels like an isolated space-time zone. The flow of time here is moving far faster than normal!"
Everyone froze in shock, but they recovered quickly. After everything they had already experienced, panic no longer lasted long.
They began carefully examining their surroundings.
They had been thrown into the middle of a vast forest, yet the place felt utterly unnatural. Towering plants stretched endlessly upward into the clouds, so enormous they created an overwhelming sense of oppression. Yet strangely, the ground was bare, no weeds, no fallen leaves. It was as though the entire forest consisted only of these colossal plants.
"This…" Rim crouched down beside the roots of one of the plants, then she said:
"This is… this is the farm!"
Shizuka stared at Rim, confused. "What?! A farm?! This place is a farm?!"
Rim nodded firmly.
"There's no mistake. Look carefully… those towering plants… they're corn."
After Rim pointed it out, the others gradually began to recognize the shapes despite their immense size.
Corn.
Some of those gigantic stalks stretching endlessly into the sky were unmistakably corn plants.
"This is a corn…? Unbeliveable… How could corn possibly grow this huge?" Shizuka whispered in disbelief, while the others continued scanning their surroundings.
"Wait… this place… could this be that farm?!" Kelly seemed to realize something.
Doraemon turned toward her immediately. "You know something about this place?"
Kelly pointed toward the enormous roots winding across the ground.
"These crops are the same type as the plants used in our cities. Their dead leaves decompose automatically, and their root systems were genetically designed to grow in almost any environment. And you said it's the year 2525, right? I don't know why they've become this gigantic… but there's only one farm from my era capable of producing something like this... The Acceleration Farm."